


The Rook

by tyroneslothrop



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Cheating, Existentialism, Fame, M/M, Surrealism, all that good shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 17:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4844336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyroneslothrop/pseuds/tyroneslothrop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan was a chess board.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rook

The sun swung like a pendulum in the acrylic sky, and he felt himself splinter in the sweltering backdrop of day.

Dan was a chess board. He was simple, strategic, emotionless and methodical. He was black and white. He was easy to pick up and he was easy to break. He was floating regardless. Ethereal. The clouds in the sky look like angel corpses from here. The way the grass was blanketed over the earth was beautiful, but Dan was never one for photography. So he wistfully looks again at the crowds, deciding to go back.

He descends down to the Vidcon meet and greet, looking like the LOST section of a milk carton. His reflection burns in the panel of the cameras in the open audience. His glossy veneer shimmers in the cascading sunlight. He spends a few moments swiveling his head around, wondering what he can create an anecdote about. It's times like these he has to befriend himself again, and then abuse himself as a source of video material. He. Him.

Dan was a chess board. He was simple and aloof. Thick contrast painted his body. People slid over his flaccid form. People used him for their own gain, then threw him back in the toy box when it was over. He could see the black haired blur of Phil from the corner of his eye and he twists his face back to the ground, refusing.

Phil's voice was a quaint, melodious shrill ringing through the chambers of his mind. It wafted above the rest of the white noise and ripped Dan's soul from his bones. The ghost rising from Phil's lips took great pleasure in tormenting him. Dan lived a short distance from his own body, and he could see himself now, face grotesque and melting. The humanity of his husband's voice only made him more aware of the glass chamber he's encased in. Dan was a chess board.

-

Birds wired in the sky, punctuation for an invisible sentence. He takes a walk down his old school yard. The weeds are overgrown and the flowers orphaned. Rubbish is overflowing from the gaping mouth of the alleyway bin. The sun is a garish blaze in the sky. Reminiscence is a simple, silent throb in his heart. He thinks to when he sat on the fence with his friends and sky gazed with them here. It's like he's feeling nostalgia for someone he's never known. He can almost see the corpse of himself being dragged up the railings.

The lunch bell rings dully through the air. He forgot it was Monday. He spits on the ground and walks on.

-

Phil has tugged him to a nightclub, and he'd be enjoying himself if he was oblivious to the reason. There is some sickly red liquid in his hand that Phil's shoved towards him, and he is more than happy to swallow it down and forget. Maybe.

The dull throb of house music chugs through the speakers and into Dan's ears, and all the chords and notes slide messily into one another. He could see the notes from the page bouncing along the dance floor in formation, mocking Dan, maybe. Claustrophobic and small, he feels a rough pair of hands grip his hips and he's so dazed he doesn't brother to shake them off. Something hard pokes into the back of his jeans.

Synthetic horns flood the floor. This is that annoying one Phil likes... his hips are forcibly pulled back to the thick fleshy scepter poking into him. Okay. Neon smoke stains his skin, and he ascends above himself, he can see his awkward form grinding messily with the equally awkward man behind him. The lights streams from the walls onto Dan's face, illuminating him in the stingy club. He is a prismatic glass cylinder. Absorbing all light. Phil is dancing at the edge of his eyesight with another man. Smoke machines overfill his lungs. Drunks howling to a sober moon. Dan was a chess board. Door handles covered in a white substance. Dan found Jesus in a synth line. The gust of the bathroom door clawed at his back. Dan found religion in another chest, another pair of hands dragging him down. “Bend over, babe”. Black shirts and black jeans. Dan was a chess board.

-

Dan was a chess board at a tournament, and he was being scorned, analysed, a constant stream of critiques. Where to move the next piece. Vox populi. He tries to fold into himself, but the commentators are still present. The artist has died at the stands and no-one has noticed. Dan was a rook, always moving in straight, pristine lines.

The people against him came dancing through the courtroom door, an anthropopathic conga line. Their faces twist towards him, flesh melting into other flesh, skin dripping like wax on the tiled floor. The room was humid, and his sweat dripped slowly onto the wooden table. Phil was at the stand and he was in mourning. Drip. His blue eyes void. Drip.

“We are here for the case of Dan Howell, all rise!”

The jury does something akin to a Mexican wave, and Dan would find it humorous if he wasn't ripping the nails from his fingers. They soon begin to fall over themselves to give proof against him, to the point where everything is a lurid blur of limbs and white noise. The judge is strung up to the ceiling and he waits for the haze to quieten down. The floor is especially interesting today.

“Did you or did you not commit the crimes accused against you?”

The single light bulb that swam over the courtroom was the imposing hand of a clock. It swooshes and plunges into the open air, and Dan's body collapses over the sudden rush of wind. The look in Phil's eyes breaks his body open, his skin folding over his bones. He could feel the shackles of warm sunlight trickling over his heart. The faces in the jury seem to swell and evolve before his eyes. Stars are just the holes in God's earth-shaped voodoo doll. His breath stutters.

“Yes, I did.”

The place erupts into cheers, and Phil flees the court.

-

The sun was swollen in the sky like a blister, and Dan felt his soul peel away beneath it like rose petals. He was a discordant mosaic of body parts that bore no resemblance to a human. Pinned to the wall of the earth by a tack. Could see the strings above him.

A young girl saunters up to him with an ecstatic look etched on her face, and he prepares himself for the customary greeting. A hello, a picture, a short conversation, a bob of his Adam's apple, a goodbye.

One of the things she says is that her dream is to 'grow up like him'. He folds back onto the bench and watches her become one with the horizon, and with the last pulsing ebbs of humanity inside him, he hopes that she never achieves it.

Dan was a chess player.

**Author's Note:**

> I've lost it. Send me prompts on Twitter (@discohijacks) because I can't keep pumping out this meandering 'what is life?' nonsense anymore.


End file.
